Featured Content

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (PS3)

• Developer:
• Publisher: EA
• Genre: Action
• Official Website: http://www.ea.com
• Score: 3 of 5: Bargain Bin

Harry is back again, and this time he is ready to use his defense against the dark arts training to really take Voldemort down a notch (and to clean up Hogwarts.)

Based on the fifth movie and book of the same name, Harry Potter has returned from his fateful encounter with Voldemort only to find that no one believes him. Even worse, his only hope of learning protection has been snuffed by his newest defense against the dark arts teacher, Dolores Umbridge. So what is a boy-wizard to do? Teach himself with the help of his friends. Thus forms Dumbeldore's Army who bands together with the Order of the Phoenix to face the big baddie and his Deatheaters once more.

As Harry, your main objective for the game is to navigate the many levels of Hogwarts, finding people and going to classes. The exploration of the campus provides small deviations from the near linear storyline that feels suffocatingly confined. Even when it benefits you to poke around, you are constantly and annoyingly nagged by Ron and Hermione that you should probably get to class to further the plot. I could imagine you get side tracked and need to ask them where to go, but with magic footprints leading you to your goal the goading by friends was unnecessary and really made me want to zap them with the cruciatus curse. Leveling is accomplished by finding/earning orbs which are literally everywhere; from completing teacher requests to fixing broken statues there are plenty of opportunities to enhance your spells. A more refined leveling system with fewer opportunities to gain orbs would have made me feel like I wasn't the janitor for the entire school.

Graphically this game does not feel like a multiplatform release; it holds its own nicely within the PS3 catalog. Hogwarts never looked better; a strong feel of the movie pervades everywhere you go-for example, the halls are filled with loitering students who you can hear whispering to each other as you pass. Character modeling is superb, to the point of giving us a lovely and accurate rendition of Ron's blemishes. Even the fluidity of character movement showed good development, down to the subtle bumping of Harry in to other students. Voice acting also was above par, using actors from the films to recreate pivotal plot scenes and inane chatter, but it was blatantly obvious Daniel Radcliffe was not among them.

Moving around that environment proved difficult as I battled the fixed camera to find secrets, or just plain tried to run down a spiral staircase. I consistently had a hard time doing what should be simple actions, such as locking on to an object so I can manipulate it with magic; invariably I would be fighting locking on to another object that was further away. Speaking of magic, the spell list available was extremely small and limiting. Interesting spells I had to stun rarely got used as combat was very few and far between, which curtailed my spell-casting to fixing the numerous broken items around the castle. Really the lack of action and adventure almost make this a puzzle solving game strictly speaking. Additionally, while the use of the analog stick was very effective for casting spells, I was surprised the Sixaxis was not featured more in the game.

Despite the tediousness of the story and gameplay, the game partially redeems itself with a myriad of other objectives and mini-games to pursue. It is a Potter heaven to complete a lot of the mundane tasks just to see very good mini-documentaries about the making of the game including a lot of the movie stars. Almost like achievements, these subquests fill a nice niche in an imperfect game and brought me back to finish them just to see the bonus material. The mini-games were a nice distraction, but ultimately they just took too long to play through.

Compared with the other console versions, the PS3 holds its head up high with superior graphics and a decent interface, and only the Wii can top it for its more pronounced use of motion sensing controllers. The game looks the part and carries a significant amount of Potter lore, but ultimately fails to make any true magic happen for the player.

Aug 17, 2007 | 0 comments
Paul Bishop